Thicker Than Water
by TMOHzone
Summary: Just before his hanging, Carcer receives a visitor.    A much-extended and altered version of an old drabble.


Father Declan stood back and watched the jailer open the heavy iron door. It was taking a long time; there were a lot of locks.

He didn't want to think about why.

With one last, dull scrape, a final _click_ and a creaking of hinges, the first door swung open. The man nodded, curtly, at the second.

"You got ten minutes."

Declan nodded. "I—I know. I've done this before." He stepped up to the bars and looked for the first time toward the man on the other side.

"'Ullo, Decs." The prisoner looked up, smiling his feral smile. In the dark of his cell, it nearly glowed. "Come to attend me in my final hours, have you?"

Declan didn't say anything, but he leaned in and closed his free hand around the bars. This wasn't the time to back away.

"Mind you, I wouldn't've thought they'd send _you_, seeing as how you've got what I might call a _conflict of interest_ here, haha."

Declan felt his head start to spin; his knuckles went white. Thirty years, and he still hadn't got used to that laugh. But he didn't look away, and he said, "They didn't send me. I volunteered."

"And here I thought I'd just got lucky." The teeth crept closer, pulling their owner with them. "Guess I still am, though—lucky I got _you_." Then, in a conspiratorial whisper: "The file's up your sleeve, right?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." The bar rattled in Declan's hand.

"Just a joke. 'We who are about to die' and all that, haha, eh?" But the laugh had grown colder now, and Declan could see the lines forming on the other man's brow. "You're too smart for that by half, anyway. You've hid it in the _Book_, haven't you?" Against all logic, the smile grew even wider. "That's downright _sacrilegious_, that is, haha. Always knew you had it in you."

Declan froze. For a moment—and it was only a brief moment, he would tell himself later, though in the end he still went to Father Cordovan about it—he'd wanted to fling the _Book_ against the bars, half to prove his innocence and half just to throw something, and then he'd have run past the guard and up the stairs and never, ever have looked back. But he didn't; that _would_ have been sacrilegious, probably in more ways than one, and whatever the man said Declan _didn't_ have it in him.

Another moment passed, in which he wanted very much to faint or be sick or even just fall over dead just so he could be through with this.

The prisoner chuckled darkly once more, and he said: "Funny sort of confessional they've got here, ain't it…."

It wasn't the effect he'd intended, but they were exactly the words Declan needed to hear. The priest looked at the prisoner; at the bars between them; at that awful grin shining through the dark on the other side—and, just as he knew the man wanted him to, he remembered.

"_Guess what I done, Father?"_

"_I'm not supposed to guess. You're supposed to tell me."_

"_Okay, okay—just havin' a laugh, right?" And he _did_ laugh, and Declan had very nearly up and left right then; Father Cordovan had always been understanding of his Illnesses. "You know that watchman what got killed last week?"_

"_I'm…familiar with Corporal Jackson, yes."_

"_I told ol' Vimesy I didn't do it."_

"_Helping the Watch with their inquiries isn't a sin, you know."_

"_I know. Please forgive me, Father…." There was silence for a moment, as though he were screwing up the courage to continue._

_And then: "I lied."_

Back in the present, Declan looked down at the prisoner—at_ his brother_, and for the first time that morning stared the man directly in the eye.  
"I'm not here to help you escape, _Carcer_." He hadn't even let himself think the name before, but now it needed to be said. "I'm here to grant you whatever absolution I can, and I'm here to give you the Final Sacrament, and then I'm going to go home and be sicker than I've ever been in my blessed life, and _you_, Carcer, you're going up there to be hanged, and may Deocaster and Donald have mercy on you when it's, haha, _done_."

For once in his life, Carcer was silent. Then he looked up, brow furrowed and eyes wide. "But…you're my _brother_."

"And you were mine." Though he knew he ought to know better, Declan reached a hand between the bars; Carcer didn't seem to notice.

He pulled away. "I'm sorry. I really am."

"No, you're not." Muttered to his boots, not his brother.

"I don't expect you to understand." Declan knelt down so his face was nearly level with Carcer's. "Do you want me to read you the rites? I've got to have your consent first."

The silence stretched out between them until, with one murmured word, it snapped: "No."

And that, too, was exactly what Declan needed. Forcing himself to smile, he said the last words that needed saying.

"Goodbye, Carcer."

And he rose and turned on his heel and strode stiffly out into the midmorning sun.

At the first alley he passed, he extracted the knife and file from his hatband and let them clatter harmlessly away into the shadows. He'd made his decision. No regrets, no remorse.

At least they had that in common.


End file.
